What They Used To Be
by leiascully
Summary: House agrees.


The pain was coming back.

He spent long hours at the piano, the pills scattered over the top of it with their little ghostly reflections against the shiny wood. He stared at them resentfully, swallowed them anyway and chased them with whiskey. He didn't really pay attention to what he was playing: just a stream of his broken consciousness. But he noticed whenever he was thinking of Cuddy, it was "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" and that was almost funny.

Wilson was "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" and that was less funny.

He refused to use the cane in the clinic or swallow the pills in front of his team. He worked hard not to limp. Most of his time he spent at his desk with one hand clutching his thigh as he moved the mouse with the other. The brain had a gating mechanism for pain: other pain would crowd out the pain from his thigh, or pressure might confuse the nerves, but he couldn't risk breaking his hand again and so he worked on his grip instead. He was getting pretty good at researching left-handed, too.

He had kept Cuddy's towel. It was dirty now, needed to be washed, but there were still the traces of her detergent on it and he liked that. It was like a trophy, proof of something more between them that he couldn't define, something to brag about if Wilson ever found it. Cuddy looked at him differently now. He looked at her differently too, something between gratitude and desire curling through him. Something almost tender. He thought about running to her house again, but he would stumble the way he always did during runs now, and he would show up hurting, and she would be able to do nothing for him except grieve. She was truly sorry, as if his leg belonged to both of them and they shared responsibility, and that was better than pity, but it wasn't enough.

House knew he was slipping. The pharmacist flashed him sympathetic looks. He tried to keep the bottles full enough that they wouldn't rattle, or stuffed with cotton, but he knew Wilson heard them in his pocket at times from the way Wilson would shake his head like he was trying to get rid of a memory.

Soon, he knew, he would forget what it was like to wake up without pain, the way that he had almost forgotten how it felt to wake up aching, but three months wasn't enough of a reprieve. Cuddy had been right and Wilson had been right and Cameron had been irritating. Except that Wilson had been wrong and it wasn't just cramping or fatigue, because the pain came as a constant sorrowful throb that was the memory of live, healthy, functional muscle.

There would be nothing to living but pain and it was terrifying after this second chance he'd be given at Cuddy's hands. He fought against taking the pills but the spectre of the pain was worse than the thought of lapsing into addiction. The pain alone will kill you, he heard Cuddy say, Stacy say, Wilson say, but there are other ways. Find another pain management regimen. You don't think you've changed? Wilson asked. And it's all the leg? None of it's the pills?

The problem with miracles was that they created the impossible hope of further miracles, and he couldn't kill that even with the opiates.

He should have called Wilson. He knocked back what was left in his glass and called Cuddy instead, woke her up. "House?" she said, her voice husky with sleep.

"I'm back on the Vicodin," he said, looking at the ceiling. "And the pain is getting worse."

In the silence he knew she was biting her lip. "How long?"

"Weeks."

She sighed into the phone. He imagined the heavy tumble of curls over her cheek as she leaned against the receiver. "I'm sorry."

"I kept your secret," he said. "Keep mine. At least until it becomes too obvious to hide."

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, but there was a little tremor through his body when she said "we". He squeezed his thigh. "You need to learn to bargain, Cuddy."

"Bargain?" She was still half asleep, stifling a yawn that he heard anyway. "What are you talking about?"

"You were going to ask me to be your donor," he said, and she breathed in sharply. "Before. Who's been doing your shots? I hope it's not Wilson."

"Ventrogluteal instead of dorsal. Less effective, but I can do it myself." Her voice shook a little. "House..."

"Instead of telling Wilson, who is frankly a lot more cuddly and trustworthy than I am, you went for the much more difficult route of self-injecting in your hip? He must have really failed his audition." He scratched his cheek. The Vicodin were kicking in, finally, and he had left the piano and stretched out on the couch.

"House..." she began again.

"Cuddy," he countered, and let the silence hang between them for a moment. "Did you wait for me? I know how you love playing the war bride."

"I waited," she said after a long pause. She sounded a little more awake, sharper. He focused on the sound of her voice and her breathing through the Vicodin haze. "What are you trying to bargain for?"

"Write me a script for Vicodin so I don't have to feel guilty about stealing Wilson's. Help me figure out something to do about this goddamned leg, if there's any hope for it, which, by the way, I'm thinking that a very sensual schedule of massage would do wonders. Don't tell Wilson or my team. And I'll be your donor and, I don't know, chip in something toward the sprog's education someday."

"Don't do this." He could barely hear her whisper.

"Don't do what?"

"You're not serious." He thought she might be crying. He wondered if she was wearing lace, and how the contours of her back would feel under his hand.

"I am serious," he said. "This matters, Cuddy. I know that. I wouldn't jerk your chain. I'm proposing a mutal aid compact. I get help with my leg, you get help with your empty nest syndrome. Everybody wins. Deal?"

"Deal," she said, a little choked.

"I'll see you for your morning jab, then," he said, passing his palm over his face. The whiskey had kicked in too and he was floating away, anchored only by the phone at his ear and the armrest under his head and the familiarity of being flippant about the important things. "Make sure you wear something that gives me easy access. I wouldn't want to strain myself." His free hand cupped in the air, approximating the shape of Cuddy's ass, and he remembered the warmth and life of her and yearned for her suddenly, so very alone stretched out on the black leather of the couch.

She murmured something he didn't quite catch. "What?"

"I said, some things never change."

"I am a stable point in a dizzy world," he said, but he was changing. There was poetry sitting on the back of his tongue, melting against the sarcasm, sweetness through the bitter aftertaste of the Vicodin that lingered for hours and the acrid taste of his familiar misery. She laughed, but not exactly, a puff of breath through the phone into his ear that could have been a sob or a sigh.

"Thank you," she said.

"Cuddy," he said, and he was the dizzy one, aching for the sharp edges of her words and the soft curves of her body. "I would have done it for nothing. For you. The kid. I don't know if I can be a parent, but I'll be here."

"We'll talk about it later," she said, throaty and sweet. "Go to sleep. I can smell the whiskey on you from here."

"Okay," he said, and listened to the click as she hung up. It took his hand squeezing hard around his damaged quad to get him to the bedroom, but someone knew, and that was almost a relief. Tomorrow they would talk. Maybe they would find something.

He dreamed of ketamine and the way it tasted to his blood cells, of sunshine through lace, of a blue-eyed child with a stare so curious it could take paint off walls. 


End file.
